


Darling, Everything’s On Fire

by Rysler



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Clexa, Episode Tag, F/F, oops I forgot tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-14
Updated: 2016-02-14
Packaged: 2018-05-20 07:03:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5996115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rysler/pseuds/Rysler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s supposed to be a PWP after 3.4, but Clarke talks about everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Darling, Everything’s On Fire

**Author's Note:**

> Spoiler Warning: Takes place between 3.4 and 3.5.

Clarke was moaning. 

She only slept in snatches. Fatigue had overtaken her as she rode her horse. She’d wanted to push on, but Lexa planned otherwise. So Clarke slept fitfully in the small cabin near Patuse and Lexa watched.

The trip from Polis to Arkadia took three days at a leisurely pace. Nearly a week with an army. A day and a night changing horses, when the moon was out and the road was lit. Lexa’s route added an extra day at least.

Mount Weather’s destruction weighed heavy, but with the death of the Ice Queen, peace would reign again. Lexa allowed herself time to disappear. The Eleven had voted against her, after all. Let them rally behind Roan until their falseness faded.

She and Clarke had followed a dry riverbed a day and a half. They passed concrete highways like monuments. They walked away from the desert that had once been ocean.

Then Lexa detoured into the fissure, to the hot spring that had been torn from underground by bombs. And the earthquakes that had supposedly followed after. She wondered, often, what lay west and east behind the Twelve—Thirteen, she corrected herself—and she wondered how much of the world the Skaikru could see.

Clarke stirred. Her features tightened into wincing. Lexa could not see what demons she faced. She settled her hand over Clarke’s arm as she sat beside the bed on a bench. She watched over Clarke as she did all her people. That Clarke was her favored meant nothing. To fight for one was to fight for all.

The cabin, metal-shingled, steam-heated, was usually the guard post for the springs. A popular destination well into Trikru territory. Lexa had banished all to the perimeter but one serving girl to light candles and prepare food. 

One day, that is all she asked. One day to seal this alliance, and they could all stop fighting, stop warring, stop dying. 

“I am not your princess.”

Clarke’s quiet words pulled Lexa from her thoughts. Their eyes met, but Lexa said nothing. Clarke’s features hardened. 

“I’m not your princess. Roan is your Ice King, but I—“

“No, Clarke,” Lexa said, cutting her off, before Clarke’s words could spin into madness. She thought so much, and so intently. 

Great strengths were always great weakness. That was the trick of life. 

“You are my equal,” Lexa continued.

Clarke’s cheeks softened at that, and Lexa fought the urge to caress them. She wanted to feel warm skin against her own. 

Clarke pushed herself into a sitting position. “We should go.”

“Not yet,” Lexa said, too quickly. “It is midnight, and there is no moon.”

Clarke pursed her lips.

Lexa raised a hand. “Clarke. You spent months with hate and rage in your heart. Only days since it has dissipated—“ Lexa resisted rubbing her own throat. “You need to heal.”

“We don’t have time to—“

“We have time.”

Clarke narrowed her eyes, but said no more.

Lexa stood gracefully. “Come. They have prepared a bath.”

“They?” Clarke took her hand obediently, as if touching were nothing between them. 

Lexa led her outside outside, to a massive stone basin filled with water, steaming slightly. It was as large as the cabin. Torches surrounded it. An overhanging trellis blocked out the sky with vines.

Clarke inhaled, then looked at Lexa.

“What is it?” Lexa asked.

“Does it bother you that I’ve been with other women? And men?”

Like a hot blade to the gut. Lexa counseled her face to remain still. “No, Clarke. It is a reminder that you are not my possession. We both belong to the world.”

She didn’t need to ask why Clarke had inquired. This energy between them, this unavoidable friction, had to be confronted. Neither of them were coy.

Clarke seemed satisfied. She resumed studying the pool.

“May I undress you?” Lexa asked.

Clarke nodded. She shed her jacket. Then Lexa stepped before her and reached for the waist of her shirt. Clarke tensed, met her gaze, and then looked past her. Lexa’s fingertips grazed bare skin as she raised the shirt. Clarke helped her once it was at her head. Then the undergarment. 

Lexa indulged herself in an open gaze. 

Clarke cleared her throat. “You branded Kane.”

“Yes. To show the tribe’s submission to the Commander.”

“You didn’t brand me.”

“Never.”

“My boots,” Clarke said.

Lexa guided her to sit on the stones next to the basin. She knelt before Clarke and balanced carefully to pull off one boot. Then the other.

Clarke watched, waiting, a ghost of a smile in her lips. 

Lexa smiled back. Then she reached for the belt buckle. Clarke hissed in a breath, but made no gesture to stop Lexa from working her pants open, and then sliding them down with what Clarke wore underneath. Clarke’s scent, always strong, filled her. Lexa almost mourned that the water would wash it away. 

There was no rejection, no tenseness in Clarke.

Lexa stood, willing herself not to say “You’re beautiful,” or anything else she knew Clarke could not want to hear.

Clarke’s smile manifested. “Now what?”

“Now you get into the pool.”

The argument was on the tip of Clarke’s tongue. Lexa waited, seeing if words would come between them. But Clarke curled her tongue behind her teeth. She stood, and then slipped into the pool, sinking in the water up to her neck.

Lexa settled onto the rock. She reached for the bottle left on a little ledge. 

“Is that real soap?”

Lexa nodded.

“I’ve only seen pictures. In school.”

There were more bottles of soap, some as large as canteens, on the shelf, and oils and creams inside the cabin.

“It is brought here as an offering. Gathered from empty places across the tribes. It is only here. Go under.”

Clarke obliged, dunking underneath the water, then rising up again, water rolling off her skin. Then she turned away, giving the back of her neck to Lexa. 

Lexa worked the soap into Clarke’s hair. At first Clarke was silent, but then she began to let out loud sighs, almost-groans. Emboldened by them, Lexa let her soapy fingers caress Clarke’s ear, then the side of her neck. Clarke arched into her touch. Lexa’s fingers tingled with heat. Clean smells tickled her nose. 

“Wash it out,” Lexa said. 

Clarke submerged once more, vigorously scrubbing at her head. When she returned, she was facing Lexa, and worry etched her features.

Lexa did not look at her. But Clarke spoke anyway. “Costia—“

Lexa closed her eyes.

“The Ice Queen killed her,” Clarke said.

“Yes.”

“Herself?”

“Yes.”

“You must have plotted revenge for so long. Planned it. Practiced it. Fantasized about her blood on your fingers.”

Lexa said nothing.

“How did it feel?”

“Killing Nia?”

“Yes.” Clarke touched Lexa’s wrist.

“I felt nothing. No relief. Only disgust.”

Clarke let her go and climbed over the stones, out of the basin.

“Clarke.”

Clarke attacked the ties of her shirt, yanking them open. “You’re going in.”

“What?”

Lexa’s torso was exposed to the air. She shivered, though it was warm from the steam. She stood up precariously as Clarke’s hand slid down her abdomen. “I don’t think—“

“Stop thinking,” Clarke said. 

When Lexa was naked, Clarke helped her into the pool. The water was warmer than the air, but not scalding. 

“Sit,” Clarke said, positioning her on the submerged rock Clarke had vacated. 

Lexa faced away from Clarke. Clarke’s hands were on her shoulders. Squeezing almost roughly, traveling over her neck and down her arms. Lexa closed her eyes and tried to endure it.

“Do you think you don’t deserve this?” Clarke asked.

Clarke had been clever. Now Lexa was in no position to silence her. Clarke could speak as she desired, each word a lash to Lexa’s skin. “Because of Mount Weather? Because of Costia?”

It was an argument Lexa would have used, but that did not ease the burden of hearing it from Clarke.

“Because of Death?”

Then Clarke’s lips touched the side of her neck, scorching. Open-mouthed almost-kisses burned along her shoulder, then across her back. Her tattoos. 

The thought came that Clarke might kill her after all. That this was an elaborate ruse somehow, or that Clarke’s physical lust needed to be satisfied as well as the bleakness in her heart.

Then Clarke caught her cheek, turned her around, and kissed her mouth. 

Clarke should have tasted of ashes, but she tasted of life and breath and strawberry-scented soap. When the kisses did not stop, Lexa intensified them, offering her tongue as well as her mouth. Clarke gave in return. 

“Here?” Clarke asked when they parted. Here, under the vines and the dark sky.

Lexa shook her head. “There’s a law.”

So Clarke helped Lexa out of the pool and they went inside the cabin, and kissed standing up, and then leaning, breast to breast, thigh to thigh, until Clarke began to sob.

Clarke retreated to sit on the bed. Lexa sat beside her, not touching her. Just waiting.

Clarke rubbed at her face. “I want to forget. Not remember.”

“What do you remember?” Lexa asked.

Clarke fled from her, fled from the cabin, to vomit into the bushes along the trail. 

Lexa followed.

“Their faces,” Clarke said. She straightened, hugging herself, and Lexa could see her frailness, her nakedness, her desperation.

“Good,” Lexa said.

Clarke barked a bitter laugh. “Good?”

“This is healing. It must all come to the surface, before it can leave your body.”

Clarke stared.

“It is quite painful,” Lexa said.

“Extremely.”

Lexa offered her hand. Clarke took it. The went back to the spring, where Clarke washed her mouth, spitting out soap, but smiling again, a crease of light against the shadows on her face. 

Then they went inside. 

“You interrupted me,” Lexa said. “In the spring.”

“Sorry,” Clarke said.

“I had a plan,” Lexa said. 

She waited for the chill to come over them. The coldness of betrayal. But it did not come. Clarke must know, then, that Lexa would not choose her people over Clarke again. That she had to live for something more than peace. To feel pain. The pain that Clarke felt, that Lexa had tried to train away, for humanity’s sake.

“Lie down on your stomach,” Lexa said.

Clarke fell onto the bed, her face at an angle on the pillow. 

Lexa settled beside her and filled her hands with oil. She began rubbing Clarke’s back.

Clarke sighed. 

Lexa massaged until the tension subsided, until Clarke’s wary expression melted into one of almost-sleep.

“The pain goes deep,” Clarke said. “I don’t think even you can reach it.”

“How did you become so powerful?”

Clarke chuckled, eyes closed. “You mean, like a Commander?”

“I suppose.” Lexa quieted her hands into gentle strokes, making circles on Clarke’s oil-softened skin.

“My parents. I think I was born to it. My mother was on the Council, and a doctor, and my father was a great scientist. You would think, on the Ark, everyone would be great. That there’d be no criminals among us. That two thousand people could get along. I wasn’t special, I thought. Until.”

Clarke stopped speaking. A tear appeared on her cheek, another on her nose. She brushed them away.

“My father was murdered. And my life changed. And it never changed back.”

Lexa stroked her cheek, and then her hair.

“I wanted so badly to be like him. I guess I am,” Clarke said. “He died doing what was right.”

Clarke rolled over, and frowned at Lexa. “You’re still naked.”

Lexa nodded. “No armor.”

Clarke exhaled, but didn’t break her gaze with Lexa’s. “Instead of doing what was right, I saved who I loved instead.”

“I’m sorr—“

“Stop. It’s not your fault. You saved a lot of innocent people that night.” Clarke shook her head. “Bellamy offered me forgiveness. You did too. Even my mom—Anyway. It’s me who needs to forgive.”

Lexa held her breath.

“I forgive you, Lexa. I forgive you, and Roan, and Finn. Bellamy. Especially you.” Clarke’s eyes shone with tears again but she took Lexa’s hand.

Lexa pulled it to her lips. “Thank you.”

Clarke tugged and made Lexa’s hand cover her breast. “When I say that I mean I—I mean.”

“I know what you are saying, Clarke.”

“And I’m going to prove it.”

“Prove it?” Lexa asked.

Clarke drew Lexa’s palm down her breast, across her stomach, and then between her legs, where she pressed Lexa against her. Where there had been no talk of Death. Where life began anew, again and again. Lexa twisted against the heat, exploring and touching. Clarke’s expression showed relief and tension. Like drawing back a bow. Like lighting a candle. 

“I’m going to stop talking,” Clarke said.

Lexa’s smile warmed her cheeks. She bent to kiss Clarke.

“I mean it,” Clarke said against Lexa’s lips.

Lexa ran her released hand along Clarke’s inner thigh. 

“Because I know—“

Lexa muffled the last of Clarke’s words with a deepening, searching kiss. Clarke tangled her hands in Lexa’s hair. She held Lexa close, and breathed across Lexa’s cheek and chin and ear between kisses, communicating without words where Lexa’s caress was needed most. Where it would, at long last, be welcome. Be desired.

“Lexa, please,” Clarke said, breaking her promise. 

Lexa sensed Clarke said the words for her pleasure, and she rewarded them, moving back to replace her fingers with her mouth. Clarke’s grip followed, tugging at her hair, gently scratching her scalp, then at last falling away, leaving Lexa, unbound, to do what she would to Clarke’s body.

She whispered thank you and for the first time in too many years, made love to someone until they cried out her name. 

At Clarke’s panted bidding, she sat up and kissed her, mingling their breath one again.

Clarke’s smile, washed hair, and uncovered flesh made her look younger than her wisdom. It was as if Clarke were revealing her true self. The Nightblood who believed that the world is good, and that she will live forever.

With effort, Clarke sat, drawing Lexa into her lap. Lexa straddled her, unprotected from Clarke’s wandering hands. 

The radio crackled. 

Clarke gave Lexa a shove. “Turn it off.”

Lexa set her jaw even as she stood. “We should not, Clarke.”

“We’re a day’s ride from anywhere. What good would any news do us now? From either of our people.”

Lexa knelt and turned the dial. The radio’s static silenced. She returned to Clarke, who had stood, and now guided Lexa down to the bed. 

“When was your last orgasm, Lexa?” Clarke asked.

“My release?” 

“Yes. Your ‘release.’” Clarke seemed amused.

“Every day since Roan delivered you, since you were no longer lost, and I no longer worried. Every day I have desired you. I have imagined what you would do.”

Clarke leaned close, over her, her hot breath on Lexa’s lips. “What did I do?”

“You understood me.” Lexa licked her lips. “You did not fear me.”

Clarke shook her head. “There is nothing to fear.”

Lexa smiled.

Clarke lowered herself onto Lexa, peppering kisses across her temple, her cheeks, her nose as she settled. When she was on her forearms, her weight present but light, her legs around Lexa’s thigh, Lexa closed her eyes. She began to move under Clarke, feeling sheltered. Free. 

Clarke’s back was still slick with oil as Lexa tried to hold fast to her. They moved together, breathing audibly. Not speaking. Lexa’s desire was fire in her stomach that she could not seem to quench against Clarke. Each rocking movement excited her further. 

Clarke kissed her neck, like she had in the pool, and Lexa was yearning for more, for something she couldn’t explain until Clarke’s weight shifted. Clarke’s fingers found her. Then her body was fire and Clarke was fresh air fanning the flames. Lexa knew this would happen if she had Clarke in her arms like this. That Clarke would rend her apart, bring chaos, break her will.

Lexa wanted to scream. Clarke’s fingers were inside. She and Clarke were joined together, moving as one. Her hand found Clarke, too, and Clarke’s thighs widened for her, pulling her closer.

“I need you,” Lexa said. 

She wasn’t sure if she’d managed the words aloud until Clarke drove deeper, stroking steadily inside her. Lexa tried to hold onto the sensations. She tried to make each touch into memory. But Clarke pushed her to her release. The fire turned to liquid, then fled from her. 

Clarke still moved, and Lexa cupped her, nearly laughing with a spontaneous lightness in her chest, as Clarke flung herself back. 

“Yes,” Clarke said, and then, “Right there.” “Lexa, please.” It was if a spell had been broken. A bow had snapped. Clarke was nothing now but pleasure. She collapsed heavily onto Lexa, and then ignored Lexa’s complaining shoves. 

“Off,” Lexa finally commanded.

Clarke slid to the side. She smirked at Lexa’s lazy almost-smile. 

Lexa turned to press her forehead to Clarke’s. 

“You have what you wanted,” Clarke said.

“So do you, Clarke.”

“So we both win? I don’t know if that’s possible.”

“It is possible.”

Clarke propped herself up on her elbow and grasped Lexa’s hand with her free one, over Lexa’s stomach. 

Lexa tilted her head back to see her face.

“You’ve pledged yourself to me,” Clarke said.

“Yes.”

“I pledge myself to you.”

“Clarke—“

“My life is in your hands, Lexa. I trust you. Do what you want with me.”

“The first test will come quickly,” Lexa said.

Clarke raised her eyebrows, sitting up.

Lexa left the bed and went to her saddlebags. She pulled out a packet of grey powder. “You will take this, and have no dreams tonight.”

“No,” Clarke said.

Lexa found a cup and poured the powder into it, and then water from a canteen. 

“Just for one night,” Lexa said.

“Fine.”

Lexa offered the cup.

“I can’t believe you’re commanding me already.”

“I cannot believe your surprise,” Lexa said. 

Clarke wrinkled her nose, but drank a healthy drought. “Are you going to join me?”

“No. I will keep watch,” Lexa said.

Clarke fell back on the bed. “Your turn tomorrow.”

“Once we’re in Arkadia,” Lexa said.

“You’ll feel safe there?”

“With you.”

Clarke smiled and closed her eyes. “All right. Just this once. You can have your way.”

“As you said. We both win.”

Clarke slept, and Lexa rested. At last.


End file.
